Evelia thought seeing her friends in the hallway where they were having their own party, hidden from the other guests, would make her feel better.

She was wrong.

The familiarity of the conversation between six of her favorite people in the entire world, the spontaneous laughs lubricated with liquor, did nothing but deepen the pit in her stomach. Could she have imagined what she saw on the balcony? Perhaps. To clear up her doubts, she would have to step outside and look at the night sky, and that idea alone drained the color from her face.

Without knowing what to say, she remained still, holding her empty glass. The sickening smell of beer, somehow intensified by the air conditioner, made her queasy.

Evelia crossed her arms. She dreaded seeing someone or... something lurking in the darkness, behind the large tempered glass of the empty offices. Even though the ample unfurnished corridors looked the same as before, their fluorescent lights no longer seemed bright enough to keep the night at bay.

"Did you see a ghost?" Ernest joked after taking a puff of his joint. His face was flushed with alcohol.

All of them turned to Evelia, except for Adam; he avoided meeting her eyes.

At that moment, Evi observed her friends in more detail than ever before. The men, uniformed with the same dark suit (cheap and rented), had managed to let their personalities shine through in small ways. Ernest had rolled up his sleeves to show his tattoos, Adam was wearing sneakers, while Santiago's tie was identical to one Daddy Yankee had worn. And then there was Chuo, who looked like an underpaid bank teller trying to blend in with the crowd.

On the other hand, the dresses of Evi's two girlfriends were at the opposite extremes of the decorum spectrum.

"Evi, are you okay?" Claudia asked her.

Claudia's stern features and piercing eyes made Evelia uncomfortable.

"Here you go, kiddo." Santiago offered Evi his marijuana cigarette. "Just what the doctor prescribed."

"Please! When Saint Evelia smokes a joint, it will be a snowy day in hell," Ernest said. "She's so pure and chaste that poor Adam is fasting until their wedding night, am I right? How long has it been since you had your banana in a fruit salad?"

Ernest moved as if to touch Adam's crotch. Adam recoiled, upset, while Santiago burst into laughter.

Evelia found the whole thing depressing.

"Your girlfriend is shaking," Claudia pointed out, ignoring both Ernest and Santiago.

Adam didn't move. Chuo, however, tried to comfort Evelia by putting his hand on her shoulder, something that proved impossible since he'd been playing the part of Ernest's drink coaster all night long and was holding a bottle of beer in each hand.

"M-maybe we can leave?" Chuo's voice, which didn't match his towering height at all, sounded weaker than usual. "I mean, we've already shown our faces, and it's not like we are downstairs with the others."

"We haven't 'shown our faces' until the president sees us," Santiago said.

Vera drew Santi closer in her arms, pressing her pronounced cleavage against him without stopping her hips' movements to the beat of Juan Luis Guerra. The song playing on her stereo was drowning out the music's murmur coming from the party three floors below them.

"Come on, Santi. Don't get all serious. It's Christmas!" Vera told him. "And the Mission is over! No more internship or dissertation! Besides—"

"Fucking dissertation!" Ernest interrupted her, raising his drink so it would enter the camera's field of vision. He hadn't stopped recording for a second.

"Besides," Vera continued with that grin that came so easily to her, "Evi drinks two shots and gets dizzy. That's all. No need to worry, right?"

Evelia wiped a tear off her cheek and smiled at them, but it was perfunctory. This was too little, too late. She could see it in their faces; they were worried about her now.

"Evi?" Adam left Ernest's side and hunched over to meet his girlfriend's eyes. "Do you wanna leave?"

Evelia nodded. "We all have to."

"Can't control Bianca, can't control his woman either," Ernest said under his breath.

Adam stood tall. "What did you say about my little sister?"

Ernest shrugged. Everyone knew that Bianca was off-limits.

"Don't be a pig," Claudia snapped at Ernest. "We all heard you. Oh! And Monagas abolished slavery a century and a half ago, so Evi is nobody's property."

"Please, don't get upset," Chuo said. "You know how Ernest is."

Ernest threw his joint to the floor and ground it out with the heel of his shoe, starting to bluster again. "And how am I, Jesús?"

"Here we go," Vera poured herself another drink.

Ernest then taunted Chuo and backed him against a wall.

"Dude, don't be like that." Santiago grabbed Ernest by the forearm.

"No," Ernest insisted. "I want him to tell me how I am."

"I-I..." Chuo's dark skin turned ashen, as if he were on the verge of fainting.

Adam rushed to separate them, but Evelia held his hand. Tears were running down her cheeks. "Baby, we have to go."

Ernest readied a punch.

"I'm sorry," Chuo clenched his eyes shut.

Even Santiago, who knew him better than anyone, looked surprised when Ernest laughed and patted Chuo on the shoulder.

"Hold the camcorder, moron. I'm rolling myself another joint."

Shocked, Chuo blinked, looking at the camera in his arms. "Does this mean ... we are okay?"

The tension between them didn't dissipate right away. It took them a few seconds to choose how to react: Santiago smiled, Adam sighed in frustration, and Claudia muttered something like, "Asshole."

Ernest winked at them just before the music cut off, and the power died out.

"Bravo!" Vera slow clapped.

"No, no, no..." Evelia mumbled.

"Don't worry, Evi," Claudia said.

"No, Clau. We are leaving." Evelia stood straight. In her red eyes, there was fear, but also resolve. "We are leaving now."

"A blackout?" Santiago sounded nervous.

"You think?" Ernest asked with grinning sarcasm.

"In a government event? That's... odd," Adam pointed out.

"Long live the revolution!" Vera finished the rest of her drink in one gulp.

"It's the fucking Opposition," Ernest concluded. "I wish they'd all die from cancer."

"It is not them," Evelia said. "There's something wrong."

"What's going on, Babe?"

Evelia hesitated before replying to Adam. "The stars."

Santiago stared at the joint between his fingers. "Sure you're not high?"

"Damn it, Santi!" Adam yelled.

Santiago raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

"Baby, please," Adam caressed Evi's cheek.

Her boyfriend's touch jolted her out of her trance and left her floundering for words. She went over what she'd seen in her mind's eye, not daring to say anything while fear clouded her thoughts. Aware that what she needed to explain made little sense, she wondered if they would think she was going crazy.

"There are no stars," Evi finally muttered.

Ernest looked nonplussed. "So? Prolly a cloud or some shit like that."

"Let her finish." Claudia put her hand on Evelia's shoulder. "Please, continue."

Evelia wiped away another reluctant tear. Why was she so agitated? Even though her parents were old school Catholics, they had raised her to rely on logic above all. "God is the heart of science, Evi. And science is the art of logic." That's what her daddy used to say. However, Evelia was sure her father had never seen a four-mile radius circle so dark that it seemed to devour all light around it in the sky.

Although she knew there had to be a logical explanation, her primal brain was screaming at her to run, to save herself at all costs.

"Something is blocking the sky," she said. Her heart was racing, her temples throbbing with pain.

"Like ... a plane?" Claudia ventured to ask.

Evelia shook her head.

"Aha! E.T. is here," Vera joked.

No one laughed.

"That's no E.T." Ernest's face hardened. "It's the goddamn gringos."

"Ernest, do you hear yourself when you speak?" Claudia's eyes were darting at him.

"I'm going to the balcony," Adam decided.

"No, baby," Evelia begged, standing between her boyfriend and the crystal door behind her. "Please, don't."

"Fuck it!" Ernest walked past them. "Let's find out what's out there."

"I second that," Vera said.

Santiago chased after her without saying a word, followed by Claudia.

Everything seemed to happen all at once. Evelia looked horrified as her friends stepped out onto the balcony. She couldn't shake the feeling that she would not see them ever again after that night.